You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.

Tagore sought "the play of feeling and not of action". The original though prized in Bengal long failed to spawn a "free and comprehensible" translation and its archaic and sonorous didacticism failed to attract interest from abroad. Yet a latent reverence of Tagore was discovered by an astoniRabindranath Tagored Salman Rushdie during a trip to Nicaragua.

Rabindranath Thakur anglicised to Tagore[About this sound] pronunciation (help·info) (Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) sobriquet Gurudev was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Gitanjali (Song Offerings) Gora (Fair-Faced) and Ghare-Baire (The Home and the World) are his best-known works and his verse short stories and novels were acclaimed—or panned—for their lyricism colloquialism naturalism and unnatural contemplation. Tagore modernised Bengali art by spurning rigid classical forms and resisting linguistic strictures.